Samsung said to be planning a ‘Google Glass’ competitor

Samsung is reportedly entering the world of tech headwear. Via Twitter, Russian technology blogger Eldar Murtazin reports that Samsung is planning to release the Gear Glass in 2014. Tipped for a possible April launch, the headwear could end up in a head-to-head battle (pun intended) with Google Glass.

If this turns out to be true, we’d like to see a more focussed approach than what we’ve seen with the Galaxy Gear. Samsung’s smartwatch -- expensive and limited in functionality -- needs a lot of help. Useless without a Note 3 (though future Samsung models will embrace the watch), it is little more than a notification center. For $300, it should do a lot more, and we hope it will in short time. For what it is, the Gear leaves us with a bad sense of what Samsung can do with wearables.

Then again, it’s reasonable to consider that Samsung will be making the consumer version of Glass. Their “Gear Glass” model is tipped to be launching about the same time as Google Glass, and they produce the display we hear may be in the consumer version. They have the ability to produce smaller devices, as the Gear demonstrates, and Sundar Pichai notes Samsung is an important partner for them -- yet they haven’t done much together lately. Rather than two headsets, we may have just found who will make the consumer version of Glass.